IT WAS the most traditional of send-offs, a band played on the dockside, coloured streamers cascaded down the side of the ship and tugs sprayed fountains of water high into the air, as the world's largest passenger liner, Southampton's Queen Mary 2, left the city yesterday.

Ever since she first entered service earlier this year the great Cunarder has been the centre of celebrations wherever she has been but this was a truly special occasion, the day she began the unique role that was always to be her destiny.

For 35 years the legendary liner Queen Elizabeth 2 has set a lonely course out across the ocean providing the only remaining scheduled service linking Southampton and New York and now these days are coming to an end and the 151,400-ton QM2 is taking over as Cunard's transatlantic carrier.

Officially QM2 made her inaugural trip in January when she left Southampton for Florida and a series of cruises in the Caribbean and South America but for many in the city's dockland community this initial Atlantic passage was the ship's real maiden voyage.

QM2 has been built as a true ocean liner, as opposed to today's modern cruise ships, and designed to have the power, toughness and strength to cope with the roughest of conditions the world's oceans can throw at her vast hull.

High above the water, on the vessel's bridge, the ship's master, Commodore Ron Warwick gave the orders to cast off her mooring ropes as passengers, many holding glasses of champagne to toast the departure, squeezed themselves along the ship's railings to watch as QM2 slowly manoeuvred herself away from the quayside as the Southampton City (Albion) Band played a musical Bon Voyage.

Three mighty blasts from QM2's whistles, including one from the original Queen Mary, echoed across the docks as the ship saluted its home port and began making her way down Southampton Water lined by thousands of sightseers.

As QM2 eased herself away from the quayside at exactly 6.09pm, with Rule Britannia playing across from decks from the ship's loudspeaker system, she began her first crossing on the route which Cunard has made its own over the decades.

During the next six days QM2 will take the Great Circular route across the Atlantic and down the Eastern seaboard of Canada and the United States before arriving next Thursday to what is expected to be a tumultuous welcome as she sails past the dramatic skyline of Manhatten and into New York for the first time.

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